In this restless age of speed and gadgets, technological wonders and released physical power, the subject of prophets and prophecy seems remote and abstract. Yet the Bible prophets have contributed something basic and of great value to the welfare of mankind. Rebuking the blind materialism of their times, the prophets urged the recognition of things divine. Their vision of spiritual reality demonstrated the resistless might of Spirit, before which material belief is forced to retire. Mary Baker Eddy says in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 221): "The prophets of old looked for something higher than the systems and practices of their times. They foresaw the new dispensation of Truth and the demonstration of God in His more infinite meanings,—the demonstration which was to destroy sin, disease, and death, establish the definition of omnipotence, and illustrate the Science of Mind."
The Hebrews were fundamentally a prophetic people. As a nation they awaited the Messiah, the coming of the morning star—the Son of God, who was to manifest the power of the one Deity. Their great prophets foretold the rejection of the Christ by materialism and the final triumph of Truth. The writings of the Hebrews, their poems, their utterances, the very pattern of their history and their lives, prophesied the mode of the deliverance from evil which mankind would experience.
Moses was a great prophet. In a remarkable degree he recognized the ever-presence of God and demonstrated the ability to reduce matter to terms of belief. He said (Deut. 18:15), "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me." And when Christ Jesus came, illustrating individually the Science which Moses foresaw, many said wonderingly (John 7:40), "Of a truth this is the Prophet."
